By the Blood of Heroes (23 page)
OCCUPIED FRANCE
T
he men were quiet after Strauss’s death and subsequent burial. They marched on, but if the mood of the group had been subdued before discovering their missing comrade, it was downright anemic afterward.
Like any good commander, Burke felt responsible for the loss of one of his men, but he knew he couldn’t have prevented it. The attack on the
Victorious
had forced them to improvise, and it was the very nature of that improvisation that had led to Strauss’s death. His best guess was that Strauss had lost sight of the man in front of him when he’d entered the cloud bank and had become disoriented in the midst of it all, unwittingly changing his flight path.
Unfortunately for him, he’d apparently survived the landing only to run into a pack of shamblers when he’d gone looking for the rest of the unit.
In the end, Private Strauss had fallen victim to the bane of soldiers everywhere—simple bad luck.
Thirty minutes later the muck and mire of the old battlefield gave way to grassy fields and short stretches of uncultivated forest between. This allowed them to increase their pace significantly, and they covered another three miles before Burke called a short halt. Packs were shed, rations divvied up, and they sat down for a quick meal.
At the rate they were going, they wouldn’t reach the farmhouse until well past sundown, but Burke wanted to push through anyway. Doing so would give them a relatively safe location to bed down for the night and might also provide some much needed supplies.
Who knew? Maybe their contact would wait for them.
After a short break, Burke signaled Sergeant Moore to get the men back on their feet. There was the usual grumbling about sore feet and endless marching, which Burke took as a good sign. Having the energy to complain meant that the morale was still pretty high; he’d been worried that the loss of Private Strauss would send the men in a downward spiral. With Sergeant Moore in the lead, they headed out.
Tensions were high, as every step took them deeper into enemy territory. The few farmhouses they encountered were given a wide berth, as they had no way of knowing if the inhabitants would be amenable to their cause or more interested in bringing the Germans down on their heads. They were forced to cross several major roads and even ford a fast-moving river, but they managed to do so without incident.
They had just left the shelter of the trees behind and were in the midst of crossing a wide meadow when their luck ran out.
Manning heard it first, his hunter’s instincts picking up the sound seconds before anyone else. He stopped short, catching the next man in line, Williams, by surprise and causing the eager young private to walk right into him.
Williams immediately apologized. “Sorry, Mr. Manning,” he said, in his usual overly loud voice. “Didn’t mean to walk into ya like that, but ya stopped suddenly and I didn’t . . .”
“Quiet!” Manning hissed. He turned his face skyward and began to move in a slow circle, searching for something.
Burke was bringing up the rear of the column several yards behind the two men and he had a second to wonder just what Manning was looking for before he heard it himself.
The rumble of an approaching engine.
They’d all heard it by that point, and many of them were looking around, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. The tall trees surrounding the meadow weren’t much help, for they dispersed the sound, bouncing it to and fro, making it hard to get a fix on the location.
Burke turned to look behind them and that’s when a biplane burst over the treetops, the sound they’d all been hearing finally resolving into the growl of a Mercedes engine. This far behind enemy lines the chances it was an Allied fighter were slim, but seeing the equal length of the upper and lower wings, a common design on the French Nieuport, Burke was momentarily hopeful. Then he got a good look at the rounded cowl and smooth unbroken curve of the rudder rising up over the fuselage in back, two traits that immediately identified the aircraft as a German Albatros, and he knew that they were in trouble. The thick black crosses that adorned the underside of the aircraft’s wings were nothing more than an afterthought for him at that point.
There was no doubt that the pilot had seen them, for he pointed the plane in their direction, clearing his guns as he started his dive.
Fear caused Burke’s heart to lurch in his chest.
He knew what the pair of Spandau machine guns the Albatros sported could do to a man’s unprotected body, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near them when the pilot pulled the trigger.
“Move, move, move!” he yelled, grabbing the nearest man, Graves it turned out, and shoving him toward the trees even as the sound of the dreaded machine guns filled the clearing.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Bullets stitched their way through the air and pounded the dirt track the squad had been following, the guns thundering in that rhythm that had become so familiar to him over the years. The squad scattered like rabbits at the sight of a fox, charging off in different directions to avoid providing a single, large target for the pilot to focus on.
Burke was turning toward the trees to his right, intent on getting under cover as soon as possible, when he saw Manning throw up his hands as if in surprise and crumble to the ground. Without a second thought he changed direction, scooped up the man’s limp form, and ran hell-bent for the protective boughs of the trees some twenty yards away.
The long grass dragged at his legs and seemed to be actively trying to hold his feet to the ground as he forced his way forward with Manning flung across his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He had no idea how badly hurt the other man was, but he couldn’t take the time to stop and look. That Albatros would be back for another go at them, and he had to get under cover before that happened.
The twenty yards felt like twenty miles. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart and the hiss of his breath through his labored lungs. He could see one of his men in the trees ahead of him, waving him on, and so he put his head down and ordered his feet to move faster.
As Burke reached the trees, Charlie stepped out and helped him lower Manning’s still, unconscious form to the ground. As the big sergeant began examining their injured squad member, Burke looked back out over the clearing, praying that no one else had been hit, and was shocked to see Jones still standing there, watching the aircraft as it began to loop round for another run.
“Get under cover, you fool!” Burke yelled. “That’s an order!”
He was certain he’d been heard, for Jones looked briefly in his direction and then turned his face to the sky once more.
Jones had just ignored a direct order.
Burke was tempted to shoot Jones himself.
Seeing the look of anger on Burke’s face, Charlie said, “I’ll get him,” and started forward, but Burke grabbed his arm and held him back.
“No time,” he told his friend and then pointed to where the Albatros had completed its turn and was diving back down toward the lone man standing in the middle of the clearing as if daring the German to try to kill him.
As the two men looked on, Jones unslung his Enfield rifle from over his shoulder and knelt down in the middle of the game trail they’d been following as if he were on a duck hunt and didn’t have a care in the world. The roar of the German fighter’s engine grew louder, and the crack of the machine guns added their sound to the chorus as Jones raised his rifle and aimed it at the diving aircraft.
“That stupid sonofabitch is going to get himself killed,” Charlie muttered, and Burke could only nod his head in agreement. There wasn’t anything they could do about it, except watch it all play out.
The German pilot began firing his guns the moment he had them lined up on his target. Jones was a sitting duck. The game trail acted like an arrow pointing to the target, and all the pilot had to do was follow it with his shots.
Burke’s stomach churned at the thought of what was about to happen, but he couldn’t turn away.
To his amazement, Jones calmly ignored the line of bullets walking their way toward him, churning up the earth less than one hundred feet away.
Burke watched as Jones opened and then closed his forward hand on the stock of the rifle, adjusting his grip for better comfort.
Fifty feet.
Lowered the muzzle of the rifle slightly.
Twenty-five feet.
The pilot couldn’t miss; the bullets would cut Jones in half if he didn’t get out of the way.
Jones opened his mouth, closed it . . .
. . . and pulled the trigger.
As soon as he’d taken the shot he threw himself to the side, rolling over and over again through the grass, desperately trying to get out of the path of the bullets, his rifle tucked up tight against his body so that it wouldn’t snag on something and slow him down.
Burke watched in silence as the Albatros roared over the spot where Jones had been just seconds before, the machine guns still hammering out their deadly song. The plane banked slightly, as if preparing to come around a third time, and then it continued its arc and nosed over, its guns still firing even as it slammed into the earth with a splintering crash at the far end of the clearing some forty yards away.
Silence settled over them for a long moment as everyone tried to come to grips with what had just happened, then Williams let out a whoop from the safety of the brush on the other side of the clearing and rushed out toward where Jones was just now getting to his feet and dusting himself off. The younger man met the sharpshooter with enthusiasm, a wide smile on his face.
Without taking his eyes off the two men before him, Burke asked, “How’s Manning?”
“Damned lucky is what he is,” Charlie replied. “The bullet only grazed the side of his helmet. He’ll have a headache to end all headaches when he comes to, but other than that he’ll be okay.”
Burke nodded. Wouldn’t be the first time luck had saved a man’s life and certainly wouldn’t be the last. Hell, every single one of them was just a hairsbreadth away from death at any moment in this crazy war, but he tried not to think about that now. He had a bigger problem on his hands.
“What are you going to do about Jones?” Charlie asked him, but Burke only shook his head. He wasn’t sure yet.
No doubt about it though. Something had to be done. He couldn’t have men disobeying orders. This far behind enemy lines, the slightest hesitation at a crucial moment could get them all killed.
“Stay with Manning,” Burke said and then set off across the clearing.
The rest of the squad had come out from undercover and were converging around the wreckage. As Burke approached, he could see them pulling the body of the pilot out of the cockpit and laying him on the grass. The lopsided shape to the dead man’s skull told them everything they needed to know about the accuracy of Jones’s shooting. He could hear the men congratulating him on the precision of the shot, and it was clear that they were, almost to a man, impressed with Jones’s skill. Burke was equally impressed—hitting a melon-sized target moving at roughly fifty miles per hour while that target was trying to turn you into Swiss cheese was no easy feat—but he couldn’t let his admiration show.
Disobedience could not be tolerated.
The other men saw him coming and one of them—he thought it was Compton but he wasn’t sure—said, “Captain, did you see . . . ?”
Burke wasn’t listening. He closed on Jones and got right up in the man’s face, his expression and tone of voice as hard as stone.
“Corporal Jones. Did I or did I not give you a direct order?” he asked, in a low but steady tone.
Jones, flush from his success, either didn’t notice or simply chose to ignore Burke’s evident anger, perhaps hoping it might go away if he didn’t deign to acknowledge it. Instead of answering the captain’s question, Jones said, “Did you see that shot? Had to have been at least two hundred . . .”
“Shut up.”
The words were spoken with the same volume that Burke had used a moment before, but this time they cut through the chatter like a knife and caused everyone in the group, including Jones, to snap their mouths closed and stand at attention.
“I asked you a question, Corporal,” Burke said softly, but with all the menace of a rattlesnake.
Jones squirmed, but answered his question nonetheless.
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir, what?”
“You gave me a direct order. Sir.”
Burke leaned in even closer, his gaze locked on Jones’s own. “Do you know what they call it when a soldier disobeys a direct order in the midst of combat, Jones?”
The corporal shook his head.
“Treason,” Burke replied.
He let that word sink into their heads for a minute. Burke wasn’t just speaking to Jones; he wanted each and every one of the men to understand the gravity of what had just occurred. He couldn’t keep them alive if they didn’t follow his orders.
“How about the penalty for treason? Do you know what that is?”
Burke didn’t wait for a reply, but barreled on ahead. “The penalty for treason, Mr. Jones, is death by firing squad.”